10 things you need to know today: April 12, 2013

Kerry tries to reassure South Korea, Obama approves aid for Syrian opposition, and more in our roundup of the stories that are making news and driving opinion

Syrian citizens inspect the desolated site of a government airstrike in Aleppo on March 19.
(Image credit: AP Photo/Aleppo Media Center, AMC)

1. KERRY TRIES TO REASSURE SOUTH KOREA

Secretary of State John Kerry is visiting South Korea Friday on a trip aiming to reassure American allies in Asia that the U.S. will help defend them if North Korea starts a war. Kerry's six-day tour, which will include stops in China and Japan, began a day after a Pentagon intelligence assessment suggested that Pyongyang might have developed a nuclear warhead small enough to put on a missile. Other officials quickly downplayed the assessment, saying there was no evidence that North Korea had made the technological leaps necessary to miniaturize a nuclear warhead. [New York Times, Reuters]

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Harold Maass, The Week US

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.